Desktop & Infrastructure Support

CCIT is charged with maintaining a highly-available, secure, stable, and cost-effective computing
environment in support of and in achievement of the missions and strategies of its clients. Due to the
scope of the domain encompassed by desktop and infrastructure issues, support for these issues is crossfunctional
and requires the close cooperation of CCIT’s team members.

CCIT is committed to providing timely and comprehensive solutions to desktop and infrastructural issues
in a manner proportional to business need and potential or actual business impact.

The following chart defines how CCIT prioritizes and responds to desktop and infrastructure support
requests.

Severity Levels

Critical

Description

This is the highest level of severity and should only be assigned to issues that require
immediate attention because they threaten business critical processes, involve major
outages, or pose major safety and security issues.

Criteria

A critical issue is one which satisfies any of the following criteria:

Undermines business critical processes essential to the mission of the
organization.

Prevents the effective use of any major service.

Seriously affects a substantial number of computer users.

Poses a major threat to information security.

Might severely impact the reputation of the organization.

In the judgment of CCIT staff members, this level of severity is warranted.

Examples

Hardware failure disrupting activities of essential system or time-sensitive and
business critical activities.

Service Level Targets

Within or outside of normal business hours:

Acknowledgement: The problem should be acknowledged immediately.
Appropriate support personnel should be contacted immediately. CCIT
management and senior management of The College should be notified
immediately.

Assessment: The problem should be assessed within one hour of being
reported. All affected parties, CCIT management, and the senior
management of The College should be notified of the assessment and the
expected time of resolution.

Resolution/Mitigation: Critical problems
should be resolved or mitigated within two hours.

All necessary resources will be re-allocated to resolve the issue. This may, in
turn, affect CCIT’s ability to meet other defined service level targets. In such
cases, reasonable attempts will be made to manage expectations and
communicate new expected times of resolution.

Appropriate Request Submission Interfaces

Web & Phone

Major

Description

Major issues are those that pose a serious impact to business processes
if not addressed quickly.

Criteria

A major issue is one which satisfies any of the following criteria:

Prevents the effective use of any service and affects a substantial
number of computer users.

Disrupts the activities of a substantial number of computer users
and no work around exists.

Poses a minor threat to information security.

Might possibly impact the reputation of the organization.

Creates very serious implications for an individual user.

In the judgment of CCIT staff members, this level of severity
is warranted.

Examples

System unavailable to a percentage of the organization’s
users.

Failure disrupting activities of a functional area.

Inability of user to access essential piece of information.

Service Level Targets

Within or outside of normal business hours:

Acknowledgement: The problem should be acknowledged immediately.
Appropriate support personnel should be contacted immediately.
CCIT management should be notified immediately.

Assessment: The problem should be assessed within two hours of being
reported. All affected parties and CCIT management should be notified of the
assessment and the anticipated time to resolution.

Resolution/Mitigation: The problem should be resolved or mitigated within four
hours.

All necessary resources will be re-allocated to resolve the issue. This may, in
turn, affect CCIT’s ability to meet other defined service level targets. In such
cases, reasonable attempts will be made to manage expectations and
communicate new expected times of resolution.

Appropriate Request Submission Interfaces

Web & Phone

Normal

Description

This represents the ‘typical’ problem, and should be the
most frequently assigned level of severity.

Criteria

An issue which satisfies any of the following criteria:

Prevents the use of any fully supported service or application by an individual.

Disrupts the activities of a substantial number of computer users, but a work
around exists.

Inconveniences the activities of a substantial number of computer users.

Might imply a minor threat to information security.

Examples

Monitor/LCD screen is dead

Computer won’t boot

Software installation when software is critical to job responsibilities

File system quota exceeded

Shared network printer down

Service Level Targets

During normal business hours:

Acknowledgement: The problem should be acknowledged
within four hours.

Assessment: The problem should be assessed within one business day of being
reported. The effected parties should be notified of the assessment and the
expected time of resolution.

Resolution/Mitigation: The problem should be resolved or mitigated within one
to two business days.

Appropriate Request Submission Interfaces

Web & Email

Minor

Description

An issue creating minor business impact as it does not threaten or impact productivity.

Criteria

An issue which satisfies any of the following criteria:

Causes inconvenience to an individual

Any problem in a “limited support” category

Examples

CD-Drive non-functional

Mouse is jumpy on the screen

Questions regarding application features

Installation of most peripheral devices

Service Level Targets

During normal business hours:

Acknowledgement: The problem should be acknowledged within one business
day.

Assessment: The problem should be assessed within one to two business days.
The effected parties should be notified of the assessment, and the expected
time of resolution.

Resolution/Mitigation: The problem should be resolved within three to five
business days.

Appropriate Request Submission Interfaces

Web & Email

Enhancement

Description

Enhancements are those issues that have little to no business impact and do not
materially affect productivity.

Criteria

All issues that do not fall into the above described levels of severity.

Examples

Service Level Targets

Acknowledgement: The problem should be acknowledged
with one to two business days.

Assessment: The problem should be assessed within one week. The effected
parties should be notified of the assessment, and the expected time of
resolution.

Resolution/Mitigation: The problem will be assigned the least priority, and
therefore, no definite resolution date. However, best efforts will be made to
assist the user within one week.

Appropriate Request Submission Interfaces

Web & Email

3 Ways to Get Help

Web

CCIT’s Bugzilla knowledge management and support system offers the most direct means of filing a support request. Because of its directness, this is CCIT's preferred interface for the submission of requests. Additionally, outside of normal business hours, this is the best mechanism for alerting CCIT to critical issues.

By logging in using your UNI and password at the following URL, you can submit detailed requests and assist us in our assessment by specifying the request’s severity and category:

In specifying the severity of a request via this interface, CCIT requests that you carefully observe the definitions of severity for the category of request. By filing a major or critical request through this system, staff members will be paged.

E-mail

You can send an e-mail to ccit@columbia.edu which will open a ticket with CCIT’s Bugzilla. Keep in mind your e-mail must be from a columba.edu email account or it will be ignored.

Phone

If you do not have access to a web browser or email client (either your own or a colleague’s), you may phone CCIT to report a technical support issue by dialing (212) 851-9713.